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Tag: New Trust Update

Factary’s New Trust Update was first launched in 1993. It was the first service of its kind, allowing subscribers to become aware of any relevant grant-makers in the weeks following their registration, before they get swamped by applications or listed on any other directory.

Since then we have published over 285 issues – and sought to constantly improve the service, providing even more value for our non-profit subscribers. In 2015 we launched our new online Archive database, utilising our extensive back catalogue by making all past issues since 2005 available online and all featured trusts searchable by charitable area of interests, keywords or trustee name. As of February 2019, the number of trusts on the database is over 3,200 and growing every month.

Now, we have made yet another development that radically improves the functionality and utility of this already valuable resource. Using data from the Charity Commission, we have been able to add the latest total charitable expenditure figures to all trusts on the Archive. This means the data is no longer just a historical snapshot from the original time of research, but now contains up-to-date financial information allowing subscribers to have a ready indication of the size of each trust and likely grant capacity.

access to the special Foundations of Wealth reports that were produced in 2012, 2013 and 2014

full access to our searchable database of over 3,200 grant-makers where you can filter and search by charitable areas of interest, financial expenditure, keywords and trustee names

As well as adding expenditure figures, we have been able to update the status of all the trusts and foundations on the Archive register. This allows subscribers to see whether a trust is active, recently registered, not financially active (no accounts submitted for the past five years) or whether it has been removed from the Charity Commission register.

Overall we found that only 13% of the entire dataset has been removed from the Charity Commission register, and a further 2% are classified as financially inactive. As you would expect, as time goes on more and more trusts are removed from the register and within 9 years this reaches a rate of around 1 in 5. By 14 years it is up to around 1 in 4 that have been removed from the Charity Commission. What is also interesting is that some trusts and foundations appear to be removed within two years of registration. The reasons for these early removals is not clear, but by having these classifications available in the Archive database, subscribers are able to see which trusts are active and which are not, and exclude them from their search results.

Analysing the new expenditure data shows some very positive statistics, highlighting the enormous value New Trust Update subscribers can gain by having access to this database:

Excluding those that have been removed from the register, over 30% of the trusts and foundations on the database had a total expenditure of over £100,000 in the last financial year.

There are a total of 160 trusts and foundations on the database with a recorded expenditure in excess of £1m in the last financial year.

Over 85% of the trusts and foundations on the database are still registered and financially active.

When we look at the recorded activity types for those with an expenditure of over £100,000, we see that there is a high proportion of those supporting Health, Education and Welfare & Poverty, as well as a substantial number listed with general charitable purposes at the time of registration. All activity types are represented in this high-value dataset, meaning it will be of use to non-profits working in all sectors.

What’s even more interesting, is when we compared our dataset to the trusts and foundations held on the Directory of Social Change’s Trustfunding resource. What we found was that only 20% of the trusts and foundations on our Archive database are listed on Trustfunding – so the New Trust Update Archive holds details of over 2,500 trusts and foundations that are not on the leading directory, including nearly 500 that have a latest expenditure of over £100,000.

This new development makes the New Trust Update Archive database an invaluable resource for non-profits seeking to raise income from trusts and foundations. It contains records on a wealth of trusts and foundations that do not appear on any other major directory and is now searchable by both activity type and expenditure level, making it a brilliant resource for building lists of potential donors.

So as a subscriber to New Trust Update, not only do you get the opportunity to start building relationships with new philanthropic vehicles before anyone else, you also get to draw on the vast pool of grant-makers, not widely known to other non-profits.

According to the Association of Charitable Foundation’s (ACF) Foundation Giving Trends 2017 grant making by the Top 300 foundations reached a record high for the second year in a row in 2017, with giving totalling £2.9bn. 64&percnt; of this grant-making (£1.87bn) comes from personal and family philanthropy through foundations. The report also states that the top 50 corporate foundations gave grants totalling £269m – up 9&percnt; on the previous year. According to the report these top foundations account for around 90&percnt; of all foundation giving.

In addition, The Coutts Million Pound Donor Report 2017 shows that the total value of £1m&plus; donations in the UK was £1.83bn from 310 donations. Foundations continued to be the main source of donations of £1m or more, representing 55&percnt; of the overall value, and corporate donors significantly increased their giving – accounting for nearly a third of the overall value.

These statistics highlight the importance of keeping abreast of new sources of funding in the foundations market, particularly from High Net Worth families and corporates. That is where Factary’s New Trust Update can be a vital resource for fundraisers. With details on around 20 new grant-makers each month, including notes on the professional and philanthropic interests of the settlors and interview notes on the aims and objectives of the trusts and foundations, New Trust Update gives fundraisers a head start on building relationships with these new philanthropic vehicles.

Whilst there are on average around 100 new organisations registered with the Charity Commission each month that state they make grants to other organisations, in practice the vast majority of these are not what would be considered grant-making trusts or foundations. We scrutinise and carefully select the organisations that are featured in New Trust Update and as a result, our review of 2017 found that 1 in 5 of the trusts and foundations featured had been created by a settlor with an estimated wealth of £10m or more. The combined estimated wealth of these 48 philanthropists was in excess of £12bn. Our review also found that we included details of 38 newly created corporate foundations in 2017 with the companies involved having a combined turnover in excess of £4.25bn in the past financial year.

Our infographic report, available to download here, includes a range of useful analysis and statistics including the philanthropic areas of interest of the trusts and foundations featured throughout the year, the source of funds of the High Net Worth Individuals creating their own foundations and their geographical distribution. It also includes mini profiles on a handful of the most interesting and potentially major foundations and their settlors.

Subscriber numbers for New Trust Update are limited to maintain exclusivity of the information contained. If you would like to find out more then please contact Nicola Williams or call us on 0117 9166740.

You are at a board meeting of your charity. Board member Jane mentions her friend Peter, and says he might be interested in making a donation. Peter, she says, is the owner of a large software company.

Peter, to be clear, is NOT A CURRENT DONOR. He has not opted in or opted out or opted for anything at your charity.

Back at the office you put Peter’s name into Google. It’s in your legitimate interests to do so, and Peter would expect you to do this.

Turns out that Peter’s business is based in Newcastle.

You are in London, so there is time and travel cost to consider if you are to visit him. You use Companies House to find out about Peter’s shareholding and the company’s profits. These figures help you estimate Peter’s gift capacity. Again, it’s legitimate for a charity to estimate the size of a potential donation before it decides to spend money on a visit to Newcastle.

At an invitation-only event on the 21st of February, the Information Commissioner’s staff will tell charities and the Fundraising Regulator whether or not they can do this search.

The future of philanthropy in the UK hangs on the ICO’s reply to this one question.

Can a prospect researcher do the search outlined above?

If the answer to the question is “No”, then high-value philanthropy in the UK will change dramatically.

It will no longer be possible to use public-domain information to identify or understand potential donors. Charities, universities, museums, hospitals and theatres will have to stop, immediately, all proactive forms of reaching out to new high-value supporters.

How will high-value philanthropists react? They will give less. When charities stop asking, people of wealth will stop giving, or give less and less often.This is not just an assertion – it is demonstrated by research. In “Richer Lives: why rich people give”, Theresa Lloyd and Beth Breeze report that 69% of rich donors give ‘If I am asked by someone I know and respect.’ Charities, from cancer research to the lifeboats, will have to adapt to a dramatic cut in their income.

Some philanthropists will respond by setting up their own foundations. We know from Factary’s New Trust Update that they are already doing this in some numbers. They will manage their own projects via these foundations, meaning less money for mainstream charities.

If the answer to the question is “No”, then the ICO is taking on not just the charity sector, but pretty much every business in the UK. Because every day hundreds of thousands of secretaries, assistants and marketing people do this exact search to check up on potential customers. Can that really be the ICO’s intent?

If the answer is “Yes”, then the ICO is affirming prospect research. We CAN continue to research, understand, and evaluate potential donors and, with permission, actual donors.

We will know the future of philanthropy in the UK on the 21st of February.

For three years Factary produced a ‘Foundations of Wealth’ report focused on the Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs) and High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) (minimum estimated wealth of £10m) that founded grant-making trusts and foundations, featured in Factary’s New Trust Update during 2012, 2013 and 2014. We have now revisited these trusts and foundations to see how they are performing financially and what this means for hopeful beneficiaries.

These three reports, all available for free to New Trust Update subscribers via the new online archive service, contain profiles of 104 philanthropists and their grant-making trusts and foundations, of which nearly half are not on Trustfunding.org. Top of the list in terms of estimated wealth is Mrs Usha Mittal (£9.2bn) with other billionaires including the Swire family, the Fleming family, Ian Livingstone and Spiro Latsis. Together they have a combined estimated wealth of £34.36bn – the question is, how much of their wealth are they giving to charitable causes?

Based on financial information from the last financial year 98 trusts and foundations (six are still yet to submit their first set of accounts to the Charity Commission) had a total expenditure of £26.17m. Only seven had a total expenditure of over £1m in the last financial year whilst over one in 10 had an expenditure of £0 despite some having been registered for three years now. This is somewhat disappointing, especially when compared to their estimated wealth which shows that the average expenditure as a percentage of estimated wealth is a meagre 0.08%! Only seven individuals gave over 1% of their estimated wealth to other organisations in the last financial year, with the most generous person giving just under 3% of their estimated wealth as grants. This is well under the ‘5% of total assets’ figure that is often used as the basis for estimating gift capacity for major donors…

The biggest giver in terms of charitable expenditure was Sir Peter Harrison – former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of computer network company Chernikeeff. The Peter Harrison Heritage Foundation had a total expenditure of £4.5m in 2013/14 which included a grant of £2m to the Clarence House Restoration Project and £1.75m to the Imperial War Museum.

The most generous philanthropist, giving away the greatest percentage of his estimated wealth as charitable expenditure, was Sir Mick Davis – former Chief Executive Officer of the mining company Xstrata plc from 2001 until its merger with Glencore in 2013. The Davis Foundation had a total expenditure of £2.2m in 2014/15 which equates to 2.95% of his estimated wealth. Grant recipients were not disclosed.

Other significant grants awarded by these new philanthropists in the last couple of years include £6m from The Dorothy & Spiro Latsis Benevolent Trust to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and £1m to Boston Children’s Hospital (both in 2013 and hence excluded from this analysis of activity in the last financial year), £2m to the UBS Optimus Foundation by The Holroyd Foundation, £1m to the Royal Shakespeare Company by Lady Sainsbury’s Backstage Trust and £770,125 to Clinton Health Access Initiative by the Surgo Foundation UK.

Notable names that have been less than generous with their charitable giving via their foundations to date include Michael Lemos (son of Greek shipping tycoon Constantinos Lemos) whose CML Family Foundation donated £3,406 which is 0.001% of his estimated wealth of £605m and Richard Higham (Group Chief Executive of Acteon Group Ltd) whose Higham Family Trust had an expenditure of just over £6,000 in 2014/15, which represents 0.004% of his estimated £150m wealth. Some of those whose trusts and foundations have shown no financial activity include former CEO of wealth management company Towry Andrew Fisher, Conservative Party donor and Domino’s Pizza franchise owner Moonpal Singh Grewal and Abhisheck Lodha, Managing Director of global real estate developer Lodha Group.

Of course there will be a number of possible reasons why these figures are so low – not all their charitable giving is directed through their foundation; this is not their primary foundation; the nature of their wealth means they do not have high levels of liquid assets; or they are still in the process of building up reserves.

It is this last point that is perhaps of most interest when we look at the figures. Whilst the total expenditure was only £26.17m in the last financial year, the total assets of the 79 trusts and foundations for which data was available was over five times this amount at £148.7m. 25 of these have assets in excess of £1m and 10 have assets in excess of £5m. This equates to an average of 0.62% of the philanthropists’ estimated wealth, with 15 building up assets of over 5% of their estimated wealth.

The foundation showing the largest asset amount is The Christie Foundation founded by Iain Abrahams, the former Executive Vice Chairman of Barclays Capital. The foundation has assets of over £21m for 2014/15 which represents over 40% of his estimated wealth, making him the also most generous benefactor. So far the only identified donation made by his foundation is of £150,000 to the Elton John Aids Foundation, of which he is also a Trustee.

What this shows is the considerable potential these trusts and foundations have for the sector. Whilst they may not yet be giving at a level in keeping with their vast wealth, these UHNWIs and HNWIs are ear-marking significant amounts of their wealth to be given away to charitable causes over the course of their lifetime and beyond, sustaining the charitable sector for years to come.

The financial data for these 104 trusts and foundations, along with the three Foundations of Wealth reports and all the past issues of New Trust Update dating back to 2005, is available online to NTU subscribers. If you want further information about New Trust Update and our searchable archive please contact Nicola Williams.

This was like a Barcelona-Real Madrid match, with each team playing solo, two weeks apart. Two of the most significant stakeholder groups in the non-profit sector, the fundraisers and the philanthropists, each with their own view of how to change the world.

Amongst the differences there were common themes. Both sectors are growing. This year’s Festival del Fundraising was the largest ever, and the EFC Conference was a sell-out too. The rate of foundation growth is astonishing – two new German foundations are created each day, and we know from Factary’s New Trust Update that 214 new grant-makers were registered in 2014 in the UK. The same growth story emerged at EFC from all over Europe.

While both teams are training, there is a remarkable demographic similarity between them. Women lead both teams. The population at the Festival, and at EFC reflected this, whether we were talking about the all-women fundraising team at Save the Children in Rome or the Chair and key staff of Turkey’s Vehbi Koç Foundation. The future of our increasingly interconnected sector will be shaped by women.

Both conferences dealt with social change, in slightly different ways. At the Festival we heard about social change brought about by donations through non-profits. At the EFC we heard about social change through collaboration. Yes, collaboration. Not grant-making, or at least not centrally grant-making. An excellent workshop led by Nicky McIntyre of Mama Cash showed how Oak Foundation was focusing on changing the situation of women by collaborating with companies. Katharina Samara-Wickram from Oak Foundation described the organisation’s evolving Theory of Change. The foundation had initially focused all its women’s rights efforts on women’s rights organisations. But it had also commissioned research, from AWID amongst others, and had discovered that it might get more rights for its dollar (or Swiss Franc) if it instead worked on the millions of companies employing hundreds of millions of women around the globe. As a result Oak has developed an 8-point Business Case for women’s rights aimed at employers and using them as the vehicle for winning rights for women. This was one example amongst many of collaborations between foundations, NGOs and business to effect change in society.

I discussed this with a team from a leading UN organisation. The implications for fundraising are important, with the role of the fundraiser changing from being simply a grant-chaser to becoming the central relationship point for a complex web linking her own organisation with foundations, companies and other stakeholder groups.

The significant divergence between the two conferences came when we talked about investment. Fundraising team leaders in Italy complained about a lack of investment. Salaries in the sector are still modest and few organisations are willing to take the brave step of dramatically increasing investment in fundraising. By contrast the foundation sector spent a lot of time on investment, and appears to be ready to take on risk, so long as it has a social end. Thus the Italian majors, Fondazione Cariplo and Fondazione CRT both have programmes for investing their endowment in activities with a social as well as a financial purpose. There was some talk of divestment – with foundations encouraged to divest from the fossil fuel industry. But the bigger theme was Mission Related Investment. This was talked about across the EFC conference, with foundations making substantial investments in the social housing sector, and as venture philanthropy in social enterprises. Mission Related Investment opens up a substantial new line of funding for social purpose organisations – another challenge for traditional fundraising teams in Europe.

With only a little hindsight, both conferences felt like a revolution. Just ten years ago the Italian fundraising sector was tiny – a handful of visionaries in a few risk-ready organisations. At that time most European foundations were a closed shop – few published an annual report or had a website or could be induced to talk about their work. Their boards and management were older and dominated by men. Since then we have had a wave of transparency legislation running across Europe accompanied by a push for the same by the EFC itself – so now we can see what’s happening in foundations in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain (ironically, Italy remains somewhere behind the pack on transparency.) The feeling that a revolution is taking place in the sector ran through both conferences.

A report published today by Factary shows that the top 10 UK law firms donate £50m per year to non-profits (charities, arts organisations, universities…)

Key findings in the 130-page report include:

The top 10 UK law firms donated more than £5m in cash to charitable causes in the last year; firms give eight times as much in pro bono work as they give in cash.

Causes

Law firms stated CR themes are, in order of preference, Education & Training, Housing & Employment, and Rights/Law & Conflict. By contrast, we found that publicly reported donations are focused on Health, Children/Youth and Arts. We analyse these differences and suggest reasons in our report

Fundraising

Crisis UK appears to enjoy the widest support from UK law firms, reporting donations from 9 of the 20 leading firms. Amongst Universities, the University of Sheffield leads the field, reporting donations from 5 of the top 20 firms.

Recognition

The recognition won by some law firms for their donations far exceeds that of others. Slaughter and May achieve more public recognition for their donations than any other law firm. Clifford Chance, Hogan Lovells and Freshfields win little recognition for their generosity. Comparing amounts donated by the firms and public recognition, we report that DLA Piper achieve the highest level of public recognition per £1 donated.

The report – Soliciting Gifts: Donations by Leading Law Firms in the UK – is published as a special supplement to Factary’s New Trust Update report. It is published by Factary at £125 per copy, with a discounted price – £100 – for subscribers to Factary’s New Trust Update or Factary Phi.